How do I get breading to stick to pre-cooked chicken for pan frying?
I tried pan fried chicken and pre-cooked the chicken sous vide. This meant that the chicken just needed to be crisped once it went in the pan. I dredged in flour then egg and then panko (Japanese bread crumbs). The chicken was cooked perfectly and the crust was really nice, but the two didn't stay together when cut. The breading would shear right off.
I did not dry the chicken after removing from the sous vide, so it was a little damp.
How can I get the breading to adhere better to the chicken? Flour, egg, Panko works great for raw chicken. How can I get it to stick to the pre-cooked stuff?
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Drying the chicken shouldn't have been an issue (or not much of one) as long as the flour was sticking. My guess would be that when raw, the heat from cooking causes the flour & egg to bind with the surface of the chicken. Since the proteins in cooked chicken are already denatured, this can't happen when you're using sous vide chix.
I cannot think of a way around this though. Hopefully someone else here can.
The typical issue is that dry won't stick to dry, and wet won't stick to wet, so you have to alternate but not build up too thick of a given layer.
As raw chicken tends to be wet, you add a little flour to it ... but if it's already dried from the cooking, you'd be better off going straight to wet (buttermilk, egg wash, etc.), and then getting the breadcrumbs onto it.
Also, too thick of any of the layers will cause problems, so if you are flouring, make sure that you knock off any loose flour before going into the wet, and then let the wet drip as best you can before going into the breadcrumbs. Also, if it was too wet when coming out of the bag (which you hint at), you might have similar problems. If you're going to flour, you want it slightly damp, but not overly wet; patting dry might've helped.
I've also seen quite a few recipes that call for letting the breaded items sit on a wire rack for a while before attempting to fry, and most claim it's for improved adhesion, but I don't know what the specific process involved is (if it's just simple drying out of the wet layer, or if there's some other process going on).
Dave Arnold over at Cooking Issues says the following:
What I do is brine and cook the chicken breast in salted milk at 63 degrees in a ziploc, take it out of the bag hot, put the chicken on a cooling rack, force dry the outside with a convection, then flour/(buttermilk+egg+baking powder/baking soda/salt/pepper)/flour, then fry at 375F. I haven't had problems with adhesion.
I just put egg on it, let it drip off a little, then just bread crumbs. I deep fry it, OR pan fry it this way and it has never failed me yet.
Use cornflour instead, or at least a 50/50 ratio at least.
Alternatively, try a little grated cheese in the breadcrumbs.
The three step method should work for this.
This being dredge the cooked chicken in flour, then egg wash and finally the bread crumbs(ideally Panko bread crumbs).
The other way is to do a tempura batter. But to make sure the tempura batter is effective, make sure to dredge the chicken in flour first.
Good Luck,
I will be doing this soon and I can give the results. The three step method is the best method I have found for breading and frying meats in general.
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